The 1971 war with India and the military action in what was then East Pakistan is regarded by many as one of the darkest events in Pakistan's short and chequered history. Defeat in the war led to the loss of its eastern wing, which became independent Bangladesh. Nearly 90,000 Pakistani soldiers were taken prisoner by India. Those in the western wing, which is what remains of the country today, were simply shocked.
Public demand for an inquiry led to the instituting of the judicial Commission under Hamoodur Rehman to investigate the political and military causes of the defeat. Hamoodur Rehman, who hailed from East Pakistan was the then chief justice of the Supreme Court. The other members of the Commission were Justice Shaikh Anwar-ul-Haq of the Punjab High Court and Justice Tufail Ali Abdul Rehman of the Sindh High Court. The Commission took just over two years to prepare its report, but successive civilian and military authorities in Pakistan suppressed its publication because of the sensitivity of the subject.
The report has now been declassified, after portions were leaked to an Indian magazine last year. It is not difficult to understand why the authorities were opposed to its publication for it spares no one, including the man who ordered the inquiry—the charismatic prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
The Hamoodur Rehman Commission Report cites professional incompetence, defective defence strategy, lack of co-ordination between the army, navy and air force, and moral degeneration of the military high command as the major reasons for the 1971 debacle. The report observes that military planning was "hopelessly defective and there was no plan at all for the defence of Dhaka, nor any concerted effort to stem the enemy onslaught…"